“She’s a what?”

“A thief and a dragonhome owner,” Les explained. “The worse criminal you can get. Put those two together and they go from petty larceny to whole village slaughter in under a year.”

“And you want me to do whaaaargh!”

Having gotten used to the flying car taking care of itself I hadn’t noticed how close it had come to the dragon until it, well, crashed through it. I ended up on a rhinestone parking lot with an angry blonde stomping towards me.

“What in Jiggaries Brassiere are you doing crashing into my dragon like that?”

“Well, you see, it’s Les, here, he… he…”

Damn, Les had done his wonderful disappearing act again.

“Well you can darn well crash out again.” The young lady took a bauble from her navel and it grew to the size of a grapefruit, its many faceted sides glowing with glyphs. “There, this will get rid of you.”

She thumped a glyph and I winced.

“Grrr,” she swore heartily for a few minutes then glared at me. “As soon as you can, leave,” she ordered.